


Rebirth

by sixthblitz



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Loss of Immortality, Old Gods, Original Fiction, Poetry, Prose Poem, Rebirth, Sun God, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25745842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixthblitz/pseuds/sixthblitz
Summary: The gods could hardly dream of this.
Kudos: 2





	Rebirth

He is the ascended sun

The fire of fires

He who will never cease to burn

Whose core is forged in flame

A heat that breathes and pulses

And yet he wonders

Can fire claim to be alive?

He does not walk among the souls of earth

But he takes them into his warmth

They worship him in temples

Rendering his likeness anew in feather and chariot

Laying whispers of worship and query alike

Upon his carved and sculpted likeness

Of cold unseeing stone.

He does not live as they do

He has no name to call his own

He has no mouth from which to cry his thanks

For every prayer and every song

And yet they love him without reservation

Raising him from the ashes of doubt

A family forged in the fires of choice.

He is one lone star among tens of trillions

Far from the largest or the brightest

Yet they sing to him like he created the light

As if he is more than one of its many vessels.

He has watched them over eons

He has witnessed the flickering of a billion souls

Coming and breathing and going and dying

Leaving behind only the memory of warmth.

It is not fair

That souls who burn so bright

Should be swallowed so soon by the inescapable cold

It is not fair

That they who know what it is to be alive

Should have it snatched away so easily

It is not fair

That they should be condemned to death’s eternal cycle

And he whose every drawing of breath is falsity

Should be immortalised in tome and teaching

It is not fair

And so he burns for them.

In life and death alike he remembers

Names and prayers and faces

He yearns to know every one of them

He burns with the want of knowledge

What is it to walk the earth?

What is it to be alive?

* * *

His fall is far from graceful.

Streaks of red and earth

Paint ashen plumage

As the breeze carries stray feathers

To drift across the crater’s dirt

And settle among the earthen roots of old.

He draws his first breath like a prayer

Letting it echo in the temple of his lungs

A wordless benediction and a silent promise

To a new body and young limbs

To a fire born anew

A warmth that truly breathes.

His is a soul forged anew

A gently flickering ember

Small and young and unknowing.

He is one heart, two wings, and ardour

The fragile soul of a body destined to falter

But his eyes betray what burns beneath

The kind of curiosity that blazes

The kind of love that rages

Life in all its innocence and debauchery.

He folds his wings and cleans the blood

Wiping the slick from a body he has yet to meet

He has taken the leap.

Darkness is his unlikely guide

As he turns his back on the site of his descent

And leaves behind his place among the gods

A final stand against the impartial cruelty

Of immortals who play fortune like a game.

Restlessly he ventures into the unknown

And shares his fervent grin with the night

The gods could hardly dream of this.


End file.
